Tuesday, May 08, 2007

dishpan hands

A colleague who teaches French knocked on my door today to ask about an Americanism that his student had encountered in a translation exercise: dishpan hands. The student was imagining someone with hands shaped like dishpans. Oh no!

Dishpan hands are hands that have spent too much time in the dishwater--i.e. they've suffered the drying effects of soap and water. I was amused to see that it's a condition that's listed in the Houghton-Mifflin Medical Dictionary--I had no idea it had reached disease status! Oh, how we suffer.

Dishpan is an AmE word for the basin in which one washes dishes, though I wouldn't use the term myself, as it sounds old-fashioned to me. But I see that Rubbermaid use(s) the term, as do lots of other folk on the web, so what do I know? I'd probably say dishwashing basin(as do some others on-line) and others also say dishwashing tub. In BrE, it is called a washing up bowl. Here's a beautiful one from Norman Copenhagen. I can't decide whether I wish I could afford a £35 dishpan/washing-up bowl (though the brush is included!), or whether I think I'd disgust myself if I spent that kind of money on trying to look cool while (AmE) doing the dishes/(BrE) washing up. I just (BrE, informal) bung everything into the dishwasher anyhow.

Thinking about dishpan hands reminded me of a recent interaction with Better Half, in which he was searching for something-or-other that was right in front of him. I exclaimed, You're soaking in it! (I do a lot of exclaiming), only to discover that he had never had the joy of Madge the Manicurist in ad(vert)s for Palmolive (AmE) dish detergent/(BrE) washing-up liquid. I believe you can see one of those ad(vert)s here (though I don't have the plug-ins to see it on the computer I'm on now). Catchphrases don't travel well through time or space.

31 comments:

Thet thang there is a dish tub, and sits in a sink. The basin's in the bathroom, but only if you're really old fashioned. Dish pan is so old-fashioned its off my radar, and honestly I don't think I ever heard "dishpan hands" outside of the Palmolive ads. I have exclaimed "you're soaking in it" many times, though.

I think doing the dishes is also dialect-neutal, and seems to be used with or without the definite article in both AmE and BrE.

The Palmolive ad to which you linked uses the slogan softens hands while you do dishes on the bottle, although Madge actually says "softens your hands while you do the dishes". (Well, you wouldn't want it to soften someone else's hands while you do (the) dishes, would you?)

The advertising slogan that I remember from the 1960s in the UK was Now hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face, with mild green Fairy Liquid. (They sure knew how to write snappy slogans in those days.)

Am/E - I throw dishes in the dishwasher. Mom used to do the dishes in the sink, after she got a double sink. I also stack the dishwasher. If I had to have a plastic pan to clean dishes, I would call it a dishpan. And I'd get dishpan hands. Could be a generational change, I'm over 45.

Another slightly related lexical unit is "rid the table", which as a child we used all the time at home, which for me meant to take all the dirty dishes off the table. But when I grew up I realized that a lot of people didn't have that in their vocabulary or it had a more generalized meaning of getting rid of anything.

It has always struck me as unusual to place a plastic thing (for which you have to find storage space) in a perfectly good kitchen sink. Why? I noticed that the Brits do it, and ex-pat Brits in NZ tend to do it. Our own fry(ing) pan is almost too large for the sink as it is. Is it so slops can be tipped down the side into the sink while washing is in progress?

Is this off-post? But "You're soaking in it". I did not realise that most of the world knew that phrase! Does anyone else remember "Then he said 'now we can all get some sleep'", from the Claytons ad? "The drink you have when you are not having a drink"? Suddenly the Clayton's solution, the clayton's holiday, etc entered our volcabulary. Does anyone else still occassionally use "clayton" to describe something that purports to be something that it isn't?

You might not know Fairy's catchphrase for years and years - it went out a few years ago now though. But it was kind of similar to the one you quoted. It was "hands that do dishes can be soft as your face, with mild green fairy liquid" and I could sing it to you right now. The new Fairy slogan doesn't appear to have stuck in my mind, though. Unless they haven't change the slogan and only changed the jingle?

Interestingly a northern British way of saying do the washing up is "washing/doing the pots" this is what my Glaswegian father in-law does... along with a couple of Liverpudlians I know and a Mancunian. I do the washing up in a washing up bowl. Actually, no, I don't! Like you I stick it all in the dishwasher... or washing up machine as we called it here in the 60s and 70s. (quaint).

I have never heard the phrase "you're soaking in it" what a great way of saying "you can't see for looking" or I suppose our "you're right on top of it" is a little closer. Will definitely be filing that away in my mental stack of phrases to use.

We don't have Fairy Liquid in the US, but old advertising pictures from it can be found in many gay shops. I've been in several gay households (can a household be 'gay'? what silly phrasing) in the US with 'Fairy' magnets on the fridge or posters on the wall. I think many people have them without knowing that there is an actual product involved.

Returning to the matter of dishpan hands, the closest Br Eng expression I know of would be washerwoman's hands, or washerwoman's wrinkles, sadly a dying profession. Cf the Anglo-Indian dhobi, as in dhobi itch.

But why would the US import Fairy liquid when it's just like other products produced for the US market? Presumably Fairy was imported to Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia because there were gaps in the market there...

Instead of "you're soaking in it" my husband, from Oklahoma, says "If it were a snake it would've bitten you." I like "you're soaking in it" and will have to use that sometime. I recall those commercials fondly.

I assume that raisins are what I would call prunes or pruny hands--i.e. fingertips that are wrinkled after coming out of the water. This could happen in a bath or swimming pool.

Dishpan hands are not that. They are hands that are chapped because you do the dishes often (without gloves), not because your hands just came out of the water. Dishpan hands aren't wet--they're dried out.

But why would the US import Fairy liquid when it's just like other products produced for the US market?

Presumably Proctor and Gamble sell Fairy under another name (I've never seen 'Joy' anywhere so that may well be the US brand name -- you're in more of a position to do the research).

It's the biggest seller in Spain as well. So it looks to me as if P & G decided the name was not right for the USA but fine for everywhere else.

As Fairy is like Hoover or Pampers often used as a generic word, it would be interesting if you did a couple of articles on different brand names, particularly in those areas outside food and cars where there is unlikely to be any cultural preference for the product as opposed to the name.

One of the advantages of growing up in Australia is that we become proficient in both AmE and BrE. Dishpan Hands is an easily recognisable concept amongst my (smallish) test group here. But definately one of those grammatical metaphors we are cautioned about using in texts designed for ESL friends!

The object of putting the dishpan into the perfectly good sink is to allow one to rinse a dish in cold water, outside of the dishpan, allowing the sudsy water inside the dishpan to remain hot. Nowadays many people dispense with dishpans altogether, if they have a dual-basin sink, allowing hot water to wash on the left, and a separate basin to rinse in cold, usually on the right. But these double basin sinks are far from ubiquitous.

when I was growing up and it was my day to do the dishes, my parents both used the term "Time to do the pots and pans young man". I did once try to avoid doing half the washing up by taking them literally, however that actually work in my favour too well. I digress though, my main point i wanted to make was regarding "dishpan hands". Victorian England nobility would actually look at a servents hands before hiring under the illusion (or perhaps not) that those with "dishpan hands" were hard working.

For the delight and edification of those on both sides of the pond, might I recommend the website Telly Ads. An ongoing archive of current commercials, and now also quite a large collection of classics.http://www.tellyads.com/